What’s that Popping Noise?

It’s only a 1/4 mile walk to my favorite bass pond in the world. Up a small, grassy trail that snakes it’s way through a recently cleared forest, the pond is barely 100 yards long. It drinks the water from one small feeder creek and has three nice (but very small) coves on the upper end, and an earthen dam. The dam is where those who are not fishing for bass park their 5-gallon buckets that they use for seats – and as makeshift coolers for their catch. Most days, as far as I can tell, they might as well have hauled in their couch from home, and a Tupperware bowl to hold their catch. They seldom move all day, and often have only four or five small fish to show for it. Many times I’ve tried to help these folks – pointing out bedding bluegills just yards away. They nod politely, or say “Is that so?” and continue to sit in the same spot – on their multi-purpose bucket, as firmly planted as any Georgia Pine.

The casting is tight around the pond with trees, both upright and fallen, lining the banks. The little puddle is full of stumps, logs and downed trees. Sometimes you have to crawl over 5 or 10 such trees just to make your way around to the spot where the creek comes into the pond. It’s usually thick with ticks and I’m quite sure, although I’ve only seen a few in the last 20 years, snakes too. It’s banks force the bass stalker to make a choice: thick and slippery mud, or knee high(snake hiding?) weeds. You can probably imagine now why the Bucket Brigade chooses to lazy away their day in the more open areas around the dam.

The fish who call the pond home are bass, bream, catfish and the occasional crappie… although the crappie aren’t supposed to be there. The largemouth bass are supposed to be there and they make quite a showing in mid-spring; about the time that the carpenter bees decide on their chosen bit of airspace. Throwing a small minnow plug or wooly bugger can yield surprising results. One year, I saw a fella wrestling an 8- pounder he’d hooked on a live cricket by simply pestering the fish on a spawning bed. He got it in, despite having a rod that was hardly up to the task and then released it back into the lake so she could make more 8-pounders. No good deed goes unpunished, however. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Bucket Brigade soon followed the big fish’s release and the gentleman gathered his gear and headed quickly for the safety of his truck. Where the cricket fisherman saw the chance to keep the big fish coming, the Bucketeers saw only a deep fryer and hush puppies. I’ve often been the target of their wrath and once thought a gentleman was going to “lose it” and actually come over and confront me for throwing back a 5 pounder. “If you don’t wannn him, I’ll teck him…” is often the plea. Occasionally, I’ll give a keeper fish away…but only if it looks like they could really use the meal. Most times, I think about all the time I’ve spent learning to anticipate, stalk and catch bass and I ease the fish back into his world. Nice bass are good to eat, but my choice is almost always to let them go make more nice bass to catch.

The bluegills and bream (in the south, anything that’s not a bluegill is almost always referred to as simply “a bream”) are plentiful and occasionally rather large, but I’ve never caught one that was truly monstrous there. The big bass probably keep the herd thinned pretty well most years, and the Bucket Brigade does their share of damage occasionlly as well.

Normally, I fish this pond with a 4-inch plastic worm that I rig rather unconventionally. Over the years I’ve caught thousands of bass with it and probably many hundreds from this one little pond. But this year, I’m going to try fly fishing for bass alot more. Why? I couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it. As a matter of fact, I’ve almost totally forgotten about trout over the last month or so, preferring to spend most of my free time perfecting a few wooly-bugger and popper patterns and making sure I don’t miss the bass cranking up this year.

It’s still a few weeks off, but when it “kicks in” I’ve the feeling it will be a spectacular year for catching bass at my favorite pond. Hopefully, I’ll be right with this prediction and the next post you see here about bass will show these poppers attached to big, green, absurdly heavy bucket-mouths! After all, spring is almost here ya know – and this year, my fly rods are ready.

 

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Tagged as: bass, Marben, poppers, spring